


Congress

by kvikindi



Series: The Peaceable Kingdom [2]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Psychological Trauma, Under-negotiated Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-22 14:52:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11382468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kvikindi/pseuds/kvikindi
Summary: James and Thomas put the "fuck" in "fucked-up."





	Congress

**Author's Note:**

> This story contains no references to sexual trauma/coercion, and all of the sex is consensual. However, Thomas's history in the [Unaccommodated Man](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11097009/chapters/24758742) -verse includes sexual trauma/coercion (and, more generally, loss of agency) that affects the way he responds to sex in this story and means that the sex that results is not always 100% healthy. If you would like more detailed information on this, please feel free to ask.
> 
> This story takes place in the ~year or so (very loosely) following Unaccommodated Man, about five years before The Peaceable Kingdom.
> 
> Thanks to [pamphilia](http://pamphilia.tumblr.com) for the prompt that this.... sort of grew out of.....

**1.**

James comes without a sound, only the tight clench of his jaw working and the barely perceptible arch of his back as he spills his seed onto Thomas’s stomach. The sight of Thomas under him, still flushed-faced and panting, punches it out of him, _one— two— three—_ and he grips his cock even tighter, feeling battered by his orgasm, a ship on an ocean coming on to blow. The last of it drips over his fingers as he lets out the breath he’d been holding. He lets his head drop and closes his eyes. 

Thomas lays a hand on James’s thigh, stroking the soft hair there, a very quiet and almost uncertain touch. “You used to be loud,” he says. “—After I told you I liked it. You used to make the most wonderful noises.”

James says, without opening his eyes, “I suppose I fell out of the habit.”

“There’s no one to hear, you know. The nearest house is the other side of the garden.”

“I know.”

That careful touch moves to his hip, thumb tracing the hard line of the bone. “Am I not—“

“It’s nothing to do with you,” James says, a little more harshly than he’d intended.

Thomas drops his hand. “All right,” he says. Then, after a moment: “Can you— so I can wash?”

James had been kneeling over Thomas, but now he shifts to one side so Thomas can rise and cross the darkening room, heedless of his nakedness. He goes to the washbasin and fills it from a pitcher, wets a linen cloth, and begins to scrub at his arms. He will not ever allow James to bathe him; he prefers to do it himself. This, too, is something new. He always washes every part of his body, not just those parts that are dirty, not just those parts James has touched.

James watches him bend to wash his ankles, as pale, fastidious, and elegant as a swan. The taste of him is still on James’s tongue: bitter and salty, like brackish water, the mingled taste of river and sea.

“It’s nothing to do with you,” James says again, more quietly.

Thomas does not look at him. “I said: all right.”

“I can’t—“ James stops. He feels vaguely nauseated: at the argument, if it is an argument they’re having, or at the very idea of making noise. “You might as well ask me to learn a new way of breathing!”

“I’m not asking you for anything!” Thomas says. He pulls a shirt on and stands there, looking damp and agitated. “I only said that you used to be loud.”

“I used to be a lot of things,” James says.

 

**2.**

Sometimes when they’re fucking, Thomas bites his lip so hard that his teeth leave impressions. There is a scar there. James has noticed it.

  
****

**3.**

James had rarely been able to finish with Miranda— more often when she used her mouth. He loved to give her pleasure; he would happily put his head between her legs and stay like that for half the night, until he had exhausted every carnal instinct in her, and then he would look at her sweet, dazed, sated face and laugh with a fondness that was perhaps the most genuine emotion, leaving aside rage, he had left. But he found it difficult to enjoy her body.

Sometimes she had blindfolded him with one of her stockings and touched him while she talked of men, men she had fucked in Nassau and in Hampshire and in London, how it had felt to be fucked by them, and what their cocks had been like, and he would often come like that, with her small and steady hand on him, and they would never discuss what it was that had made him come, so he would never have to admit to what she already understood.

When she was gone, sex no longer seemed a part of his world. Now that he is indulging in the act again, she sometimes crosses his mind when he is on the brink of orgasm, like a unwelcome ghost. Not very often. Just now and then.

  
****

**4.**

James says, “Can you— _God_ , just put your mouth on me, _yes_ — just like that.”

Thomas has always been very talented with his mouth. The hot wet slide of it, slow and perfectly controlled, then quicker just when James is desperate for it to be quick. But it’s not just that; it’s _Thomas_. There is something about his angelic look of concentration, his fair hair and piously lowered lashes as he kneels, that is erotic in ways that James is not prepared to analyze. The sight makes his skin prickle and he pants open-mouthed. He can’t control the urge to thrust forwards. He rests a hand on the back of Thomas’s head, sliding his fingers through the soft, straw-coloured hair there. Thomas makes a small noise in the back of his throat— oh, God, the gorgeousness of that noise, when James himself can hardly breathe, much less excavate any kind of voice for this pleasure. He lets his hand wander to Thomas’s face, wanting to communicate something— something— but Thomas doesn’t look up at him, too set on bowing his head deeper, plying James’s cock with the flat of his tongue. It’s not long at all before James can feel his orgasm building, and he grabs at the coverlet with his fists, his breath hissing between his teeth. “Now,” he says. “—Now.”

Thomas lets him finish in his mouth, as he has always done, softening the ring of his lips and moving languorously until James has nothing left to give. James stays there in the warm space of Thomas’s mouth for an instant more than is comfortable, because it is a place he likes to be, and when he withdraws, he leans forwards and kisses Thomas, because he remembers how Thomas likes to be kissed after this act.

He wants Thomas to climb up onto the bed and rub himself off against James’s chest, perhaps while James teases him with a finger; he wants to watch the face that Thomas makes when he is close to his end: slack-mouthed and charmingly bewildered. But when he breaks away from the kiss, intending to make this suggestion, Thomas flinches back and stands unsteadily and reaches for his shirt. He tugs it on, even though he is flushed and slightly sweaty.

“What are you doing?” James asks, taken aback.

Without turning to look at him, Thomas says, “I need to— I just need fresh air. I’ll be back in an hour.”

Baffled, James stares at him. “What are you talking about? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing!” Thomas says lightly, half-laughing as though it’s a ridiculous question. He has crossed his arms defensively across his chest. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m sorry. I know I’m being— terribly impolite.”

And then, as though unable to bear another moment in the room, he flees.

James sits alone in a wash of anger and fear and worry as the sun through the curtained window slowly dies away, and when it has gone, he gets up to light a candle. He tries to read, but the only book in the house is the _Anabasis_ , and he is not quite in the mood for something so military and Greek. He sets it aside, and stretches out on top of the coverlet and stares at the ceiling, thinking bleak and unhappy thoughts, until the door quietly creaks open again.

Thomas slips into the house rather guiltily, and crosses the room to sit at the very edge of the bed. He darts a glance at James that seems to ask whether he is welcome. James says nothing; he looks at him with a carefully neutral expression.

Thomas says abruptly, “It’s almost firefly season. I thought I might see some out by the corn fields. But I suppose it’s a little early yet.”

So they talk of fireflies, and luminous fishes, and a bay in Porto Rico that James has heard tell of where the sea glows where it crashes on rocks. After a while, Thomas lies down rather skittishly beside James, so that they are perhaps an inch apart, and he falls asleep almost at once, with James talking of other natural wonders— whales he has seen, and squid larger than a man, and sea turtles that are reckoned a hundred years old. Thomas turns towards him in his sleep, burrowing closer, and James strokes a gentle hand down his back.

They don’t speak of the incident, and James doesn’t make the same sexual request. Best to be careful, he thinks; careful.

 

**5.**

James knows, though he rarely remembers them, that he has nightmares. He once kicked Thomas so hard in his sleep that he feared he might have broken a rib. Another time, when Thomas went to wake him, James had him pinned to the bed with an arm against his throat before he could remember where he was. The look on Thomas’s face had been worse than the slow-fading bruise on his ribcage—a flat and dead-eyed look of total indifference rather than fear or even surprise. After that, James argued that he ought to sleep in a separate bed. They compromised: Thomas agreed never to try and wake him.

The war left other marks: scars that Thomas sometimes traces with his fingers, never asking about the violence that begot them. A shoulder that aches when the weather is about to turn; knees that pain him when he settles in one position too long. He can’t help the occasional flinch or hiss or yelp. But God forbid it should happen when he’s in bed with Thomas; Thomas will recoil from him and plunge into that panicky, fractious mood that almost certainly means an argument is on the horizon. It doesn’t matter how James tries to conciliate him, or if James would quite like to go on with getting off.

“You make more noise when I hurt you than you do when I please you,” Thomas says in a particularly uncharitable moment.

James controls the urge to lash out, although the words are painful.

“You have never hurt me,” he says at length— considering that, after all, Thomas can’t say the same.

  
****

**6.**

James had more than once looked at Silver and felt a flare of sexual passion, a brief and searingly hot attraction. Then the rush of shame, the sick cold shuttering of everything erotic in him. It’s not allowed, he’d thought. It’s not allowed.

Now the memory of it makes him want to be sick.

  
****

**7.**

“What do you want?” James often asks Thomas. “Is this all right? Is this good?”

And Thomas will murmur, “Yes,” or, “Yes, it’s good,” or, “Whatever you want,” as though it makes no difference, as though he is only a sort of toy doll animated by James’s emotions, as though James could do anything he liked to him and it would all be the same, met with the same passive acceptance, yes, whatever you want, yes, fine, all right, good.

 

**8.**

On a warm autumn Sunday afternoon, James fills a wash tub with water from the plantation’s well. It takes a long time; he has to make several trips. He’s on the third bucket when Thomas looks up from the volume of poetry he’s reading at the table (something that Oglethorpe had brought with him from England, by a young author called Alexander Pope) and frowns.

“Are you having a bath?” he asks. “I thought we were going to play chess.”

“I thought we might both have a bath,” James says. “And then, I thought, if you like we might indulge in some criminal activity.”

Thomas’s eyebrows go up. He sets his book aside. “You want to—“

“If you like,” James says again, quickly. He does not feel so casual as he is making out. They had explored all of the Greek forms of love in London, but even then, penetration was rare. In Georgia, they have not even discussed it. Too difficult, James had thought; too many opportunities for something to go wrong. Enough goes wrong, in their bed, without complicated sex. But he wants to please Thomas, and he does not know how to do it. He does not know if he can do it. But he wants to try to do it. He wants to do something that will be more than indifferently good.

Thomas says, “You didn’t need to go to so much trouble.”

“Do you not want to?”

Thomas’s lips part a little. His cheeks are beginning to flush. “… I do,” he says.

“Then draw the curtains while I finish bringing the water.” He kisses Thomas on his way out the door: just a briefest brush of lips.

They bathe shyly, standing naked in the little parlour, water dripping off their bare limbs. Like this, there is no way to disguise arousal. And they are both somewhat aroused— Thomas’s very fair skin flushed all across the top of his chest, and his cock beginning to lift from his body, while James’s breath starts to come short and fast. They steal glances at each other as though they are not meant to look, though of course they have seen each others’ bodies many times before, even these older, softer, more complicated bodies. The sight of Thomas like this, wet, and supple as some Greek statue, and so obviously full of want, makes James long to touch him. But Thomas does not like to be touched while he bathes, so James can touch only himself. He does so: lazily, without particular purpose, pulling himself fully erect with a slow fist.

“What—“ Thomas has to clear his throat, glancing at James. “Which role did you want to play?”

James says, “I think you should decide. And if you like, we can do it again, and reverse our roles.”

In London, they had tried it both ways. James had liked both, though he found it difficult to accept the idea of being penetrated. There was some fundamental shame in it for him. That had, in fact, somewhat heightened the pleasure, but he had never been able to admit this to Thomas, whose very vocal enjoyment of the submissive part was not tainted in this way.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Thomas says uncertainly. 

“You won’t hurt me.” He has been very careful. There is rapeseed oil in a bottle beside the bed, and they are both quite used to fingers. “Do you want to have me? You can.”

Thomas sets aside the cloth he had been using to wash himself and comes forward. His skin is still slightly damp. His cock is hard, and nudges against James’s belly as Thomas presses their bodies tightly together, embracing James without a word.

“You smell good,” James says to the warm curve of Thomas’s neck.

Thomas laughs, a little shaky. “I want you. I want to— are you sure you don’t mind?”

James reaches for his hand, and draws it to his cock, showing how hard he is. “I don’t mind,” he says, his tone wry.

They move to the bed, James lying on his stomach while Thomas opens him. He can’t resist rutting against the coverlet; Thomas’s fingers are trembling, but they feel good inside him. As he had expected, Thomas is too careful, stopping every few seconds to ask if anything hurts; soon, James grows exasperated and changes their position, pressing Thomas back against the bolsters and headboard and kneeling over him.

“All right?” James asks.

Thomas nods vigorously. “Yes,” he says on a rush of breath. “Yes.”

So James seats himself slowly. He likes this part, the sensation of being forced open almost beyond his capacity, the way his body tries to resist this most intimate intrusion and then, helplessly, submits. Yes, he thinks to himself. Take it, let him inside you. It’s a little painful, in the way that a sore muscle is painful, but he has long since honed the ability to set aside pain. Some part of him wonders if he gets off on pain now. He doesn’t think so, but this pain— his whole being turned tight, hot, made to yield— this is a pain that has him gasping and grinding down against Thomas, trying to take him deeper.

Thomas has his eyes squeezed shut as though he too is in pain, but his small punched-out noises suggest another interpretation. His hips flinch up in tiny motions, trying to thrust against James’s weight; his hands move restlessly against James’s thighs, not quite urging him upwards.

“James,” Thomas says, his voice thin and very taut. He doesn’t open his eyes. “ _James.”_

James leans down to kiss him, lingeringly and very thorough. He doesn’t move his hips except in heavy, careful circles. He’s revelling in the feel of Thomas inside of him. He could stay like this forever, he thinks, barely shifting himself against Thomas’s body, edging out the currents of pleasure that run through him like cat’s paw waves.

Thomas makes an inarticulate and somewhat desperate sound against his mouth. His hands scrabble against James’s hips, too light to be called grasping, but suggesting motion, suggesting need. He never makes demands during sex; he never says _please_ , which he used to say in London, fingertips digging into James’s buttocks, or light hand ghosting across his hair, _please, please_ , and James would give him what he wanted.

Now James gives him perhaps an inch, and feels Thomas thrust frenetically. When James sinks back, pinning him, Thomas exhales sharply and sucks hard on James’s lower lip, almost— but not quite— biting at it. James finds himself responding without knowing why. He gets his hands in Thomas’s hair to hold him in place and kisses him with the same degree of fierceness. All the time he is rolling his hips, lifting fractionally and driving back down, denying Thomas the leverage he needs, denying himself the satisfaction of being fucked open. For now he wants their bodies pressed together, Thomas gasping over and over again against him, hands coming up to claw at James’s back, harder probably than he realises, enough that James feels the pain. He arches; he likes that, the tangible proof of Thomas’s _want_. He rewards him with one long, slow slide— then another.

Thomas makes a needy sound. His hair is damp against his forehead; his face is flushed. “I can’t—“ he says haltingly, fingertips digging into James’s skin. “I can’t—“ His hips are jerking erratically under James, with no effect.

“Tell me,” James says, and stills his motion to the smallest rocking.

“ _God_ ,” Thomas breathes, and tries to turn his head away, but James’s hands are there, soft at the sides of his face.

“ _Tell_ me,” James says. “Ask me for it.”

“I— I—“ Thomas bites his lip, his eyes fluttering closed again. Something about the expression frustrates James; he feels that Thomas has gone where he can’t reach him, that despite them being pressed skin-to-skin, despite his having taken Thomas inside his own body, there’s a distance between them he can’t encompass.

“Where are you?” James asks. When he doesn’t get an answer, he leans in and captures Thomas’s mouth, prodding his teeth loose from his lip. Thomas makes a noise of dissatisfaction, but James keeps kissing him. “Don’t,” he says when he pauses for breath, panting. “Come back to me. Or—“ a sudden burst of inspiration— “I won’t give you what you want.”

He punctuates the threat by driving his hips down and not moving. Thomas stares at him, breathing hard, his eyes suddenly gone wide and hot. He likes this, James thinks. He is almost certain. He thinks that Thomas would not say if he didn’t like it, so he must navigate by other celestial observations, the readings that Thomas’s body offers to him.

With this in mind, he shifts fractionally, provoking a sharp inhale from Thomas, and reaches between them to take his own cock in hand. When he resumes his action, it’s slow, deliberate, self-indulgent. He arches his back slightly, inviting Thomas to watch.

It would be easy, like this, to get himself off. He can ride Thomas in shallow circles, taking him at the most enjoyable angle, adjusting his speed to match the lazy hand with which he palms at himself. But his goal isn’t to get himself off. He’s measuring how Thomas grimaces and flinches in aborted motions, the shattered-sounding stream of “ _Oh… oh… oh…”_ that he lets out, the way he leans forward to bury his forehead in James’s shoulder, his skin almost feverishly hot. A sudden fast move makes Thomas sink his teeth in James’s collarbone, though he doesn’t seem to notice this. The pain is a sharp flare that almost pushes James into orgasm. He has to still for a moment, breathing in and out.

Thomas makes a tiny urgent noise at the lack of movement and rubs his face restively against James’s chest.

“Are you,” James says, getting the words out with effort, “are you here with me?”

Thomas nods frantically against him. “Yes,” he whispers. “Yes.”

In the next instant, James is riding him fast and mercilessly. It takes Thomas the space of a few breaths to realise that he can now thrust upwards, and then he’s meeting James on each stroke, shoving down on his shoulders as though he might be able to make James take him deeper. They fuck so hard it’s jarring. There’s barely a rhythm to it. James feels forced into surrender. It’s exactly what he needs.

“Fuck,” he says thickly, and Thomas, who never swears, is panting, “Oh, fuck, oh, fuck, James,” and then James is finishing, his whole body trembling with the intensity of his pleasure, his ears ringing as though a whole powder magazine has just gone up.

He’s vaguely aware of Thomas moaning against him, of Thomas shutting his eyes and twisting his head away, thrusting up a few final times, and then coming with the oddly endearing sound he always makes: a very small hitching sob right at the point when it hits him, followed, moments later, by another one.

Thomas after orgasm is a clumsy, soft, and sex-stupid creature, and so James is the one who has to disentangle them, prying himself up off Thomas’s body and collapsing onto the bed. He is not surprised when Thomas rolls over to lie half on top of him (Thomas’s preferred position after sex; he has always liked to be held and petted, much to the fond amusement of a younger James) but he is surprised that there is something slightly tentative in the gesture. Normally Thomas quite flagrantly demands affection. Now he noses at James’s neck quietly, fitting his head under James’s chin and smoothing a cautious hand over the line of his collarbone, stopping at the mark his teeth had made.

“I shouldn’t’ve—“ he begins, sounding guilty.

“Shh,” James says, and brings an arm up around him. He presses a kiss to the top of Thomas’s head, and Thomas sighs.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t—” Thomas says after a moment. “That I can’t—“

“Don’t be sorry,” James says. “Just don’t— go away.” He swallows. Voicing the request makes him feel vulnerable in a way he doesn’t like. He flashes back on that distance, being suddenly alone in his own skin. He thinks of… oh, Miranda, and other such unstoppable phantoms. It’s as though they’re actually in the room, spreading a chill that he can’t get rid of. He shifts uncomfortably. His first thought is to pull Thomas closer, but he’s reluctant to do so for reasons that are opaque to him. The conflict between the two impulses makes him feel desolate. He can’t, abruptly, stand how close they are already, the unbearable tenderness of Thomas’s mouth pressed to his throat. He turns his head to the side, scrubbing at his face with one hand.

“James?” Thomas says, questioning.

“We should wash,” James says. “Or the sun will set. It’ll be chilly.”

He twists away from Thomas and rises from the bed, wincing at the soreness that runs all through him. It’s a good soreness. Healthy. He feels a little better for it.

But Thomas says, in a very different tone of voice, “ _James_ ,” sitting up and reaching for him, and then, sounding appalled: “Your _back_.”

James is suddenly aware of the hot tracks where Thomas’s fingertips had scored him. It hadn’t occurred to him that they would leave visible marks. “It’s nothing,” he says shortly.

“It’s not nothing. I hurt you! Why didn’t you say something?”

“Can you just— stop?” James demands. He has a particular uneasy feeling in his belly that he always gets before he says something he regrets, a kind of roiling blend of self-loathing and fury. He recognises it, but he’s agitated now. “Stop treating me like I’m a china cup that might get broken! Allow me the fucking dignity of knowing what I do and don’t like!”

Thomas stares at him, open-mouthed and hurt— then twists away, his expression turning to something tightly controlled. “I’m sorry,” he says, his voice low and taut. “I’m sorry if you find it so offensive that I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You’re not hurting me; I would tell you if—“

“That I don’t want to do anything that you don’t want, then!” Thomas’s voice has risen, brittle and tense. “Is that so awful? Is that so unforgivable? I don’t want to do what you don’t want!”

“I don’t want you to suck my cock and then act like I’m some kind of monster,” James bites out. “How about that, to start with?”

He shoves a stray chair out of the way and stalks towards the wash tub. His skin is crawling. The backs of his thighs are very slick, and he’s acutely aware of being soiled, filthy. He picks up a cloth and scrubs ferociously at himself. He feels like he is at sea and hasn’t bathed for weeks. The salt used to get so deep into his skin that he feared he’d never get it out. Then in Nassau the blood, too, was like that.

Thomas says nothing. After a while he leaves the bed and comes to join James. He washes himself in silence: very meticulously, from head to foot, starting at his wrists, like he always does. James is conscious of the pale expanse of Thomas’s body, but he can’t allow himself to look. If he looks, Thomas will still be beautiful, will still be soft and wet and supple, all the things that James constantly longs to touch.

It’s only when they’re both dressing that James says, “I’m sorry. What I said was uncalled-for.”

“No, I’m sorry if you think— I don’t think you’re a monster. Obviously.”

“No.” James pauses. “Though perhaps I sometimes forget not to behave like one.”

“James—“

“It’s not fair for me to hurt you. Not out of sheer petty frustration.”

Thomas tilts his head with an unreadable expression. “I think you’ll find I’m very good at being hurt. It hardly affects me.”

James is silent for a moment. He is fastening his sleeve buttons, his gaze fixed on his cuffs. He says, “I think that we are both too well-trained in the art of being hurt.”

 

**9.**

James dreams that he is back in Nassau, searching the Wrecks by torchlight. He peers behind rocks and into the ruined, sand-filled half-hulls of ships. At first he thinks he is searching for Silver— not to find the Urca’s schedule, but to save Silver from Rogers, or perhaps from Hands, because he cannot do this without him. “I cannot do this without you!” he shouts at the empty, wind-strewn, sea-smelling shore. But Silver is safe, he’s gone, he sold Flint out to secure that. So perhaps it’s Thomas that James must find, Thomas who’s lost and frightened out here amongst the dark and creaking timbers. “He’s hurt,” James says to Silver. “Someone hurt him. You have to help me.” “Can you even hear yourself?” Silver says, and laughs fondly. “Yes,” James insists. “Yes, I—“ But in fact it occurs to him that Silver’s right; he’s not making any sense. Thomas is sleeping soundly in Georgia, in a bed laid with blankets to keep out the early October chill. He’s not here, on this warm beach that smells so strongly of Nassau— of pitch and smoke and tide pools and rotting wood. But there is someone, someone he must find, someone he lost here. He shouts into the darkness: “Hello! Hello?” But only the echo of his own voice answers, thrown by the sea and the rising wind.

When he wakes, it’s still dark. Thomas is watching him with a look of worry, his head propped up against his hand.

“Was I…?” James asks wearily.

Thomas nods. He reaches out and lays his arm across James’s chest, almost like a protective barrier. James thinks that he should object, but he is too tired to do so. He would like to be protected from the things that he can’t use his fists against.

They lie like that for a while. Thomas puts his head on James’s shoulder.

“Do I,” James asks, “—when I’m dreaming, do I ever make noise? Say anything?”

“No,” Thomas says. “Just—“ He gestures. Just kicking, struggling, twisting, striking out, a language with no voice.

 

**10.**

“I want you to have me,” Thomas says as soon as James walks in the door.

James, who is coming from the plantation’s office, has been thinking about penal reform and has to pause. “All right?” he offers.

Thomas crowds him against the wall and kisses him. There is something slightly nervous in the kiss, a jittery and almost antic edge to his energy. “You said we might reverse our roles,” he says when he pauses for breath. “If I liked.”

James admits, “I thought you might not want to. The aftermath was not… what I had desired.”

“The act itself was what you desired,” Thomas says, sounding unsure and drawing back. “Wasn’t it? You would tell me if—“

“It was good,” James says. “It was more than good.” He takes Thomas’s face in his hands, kissing him briefly. “And I would be more than happy to have you, now or any time that you want.”

“Good,” Thomas says, though he does not sound wholly convinced. “Because I have already made certain preparations.”

The back of James’s neck goes hot.

It is late October, past the longest part of the harvest, and past, also, the warmest days; the nights are cold, though the evenings are pleasant. Thomas has been labouring in his garden late into the evenings, producing odd Indian vegetables that James cannot name, though he is content enough to eat them when they’re offered. For the last few weeks, the two of them have been careful with each other: gentle and solicitous in bed, anxious and slightly awkward as they touched each other. It was what, James thinks, they needed— easy and restful.

What he is feeling now is not easy or restful.

“You—“ he begins, and Thomas, hearing the hunger in his voice, smiles with a sudden flicker of mischief— a look that is reminiscent of their sexually adventurous time in London. He takes James’s hands and guides them up under his untucked shirt, where his skin is warm and smooth and intoxicating to touch. James slowly skims his palms down Thomas’s back, to the swell of his buttocks, under the waistband of his breeches.

“I am,” Thomas says, his eyes demurely lowered, as though he knows the effect this expression has on James, “quite ready for whatever you have in mind.” 

At that, James has to press their bodies flush together, so Thomas can feel his cock start to fill. Thomas responds by fumbling at James’s shirt and tugging it off, then having a go at the placket of his trousers. They stumble towards the bed, James kicking off the trousers as he goes along. By the time they’re there, James feels a little stupefied by his own arousal. He can’t manage to get Thomas’s breeches undone, and seriously considers simply ripping them open. But Thomas laughs softly at him, and takes them off. Thomas is hard by then, his beautiful cock arching up from his body. James pushes him back on the bed and licks at it, not sucking, but just tasting, mapping, exploring, because he wants to, because he likes making Thomas shiver under him. He rests his head against Thomas’s thigh and says, breathless, “Tell me what you want. I want to give you whatever you want.”

Thomas rakes a hand through James’s hair and gets a fistful of it, tipping his head back. “You already know what I want. Just—“ His hand clenches, and it is deliciously painful for a moment. “Just _take_ me.”

He pulls hard, and James clambers up onto the bed. Thomas splays a hand against his chest and topples him gently over. James allows himself to be toppled. Almost at once, Thomas is on top of him, splashing oil into his palms and taking hold of James’s cock, causing James to jerk up and gasp, “Jesus!” —and then, when Thomas is sinking down on him: “ _Jesus,_ Thomas!” His nails dig into Thomas’s hips before he even notices he’s gripped them. It’s like he’s been hit on the head by a plank made of lust. His hips spasm upwards as he tries to get as deep as possible; he pants, “Sorry, sorry,” because he ought to go slow, but Thomas is grinding down hard against him and saying, “Yes, like that, _yes,_ ” so James urges him upwards and thrusts again, and they move into a raw, fast, aggressive rhythm.

It’s good, it’s perfect, and Thomas is panting helplessly, his hair beginning to stick to his forehead with sweat, and James gazes up at him, feeling stupid with both love and want. He holds onto Thomas fiercely, thumbs stroking soft against his hipbones even as their bodies come together with greater and greater force. When Thomas drops his head, squeezing his eyes tightly shut, James feels a pang of anxiety. He says, “No, look at me. I want to see you; I want to see that it’s good.”

Thomas breathes out heavily. “It is good,” he whispers. “It’s good; it’s— oh, my God—“ He opens his eyes and stares desperately at James. Whatever he sees in James’s face makes him rock back even harder, and wrap a hand around his own cock.

This, in turn, strips James of his self-control. “I’m going to,” he say somewhat wildly, although he doesn’t actually know what he’s going to do until he levers himself into a sitting position, pulling Thomas into his lap. This is much better, allowing him to sink deeper and get his arms around Thomas. Thomas, who cries out against James’s mouth, seems to agree.

But better still is tipping Thomas over onto his back and pushing his knees towards his chest, so that his legs come up around James, and though like this James can fuck both faster and harder, which he does enthusiastically, there is also the most peculiar feeling of safety. He is enclosed, with Thomas around him in every sense that one person can be around another. He presses fervent kisses against the line of Thomas’s throat; rubs his hot face against the soft hair of his beard. Thomas brings both hands up to the sides of his head and yanks him down to kiss him with a devouring intenseness. At some point his hands wander down James’s back and splay out there, dragging him closer every time he thrusts; and James, who’s happy to oblige, especially with that hint of nails, lets himself turn rougher.

It doesn’t take much of that before Thomas is breathing in and out in ragged bursts, obviously close to his finish. By then, his eyes have drifted shut once more; his brow is furrowed, and James says, more plaintively than he intends to, “ _Look at me_ , Thomas. Can you just— please? Please?”

Thomas blinks up at him, eyes wide and dazed with some emotion that James cannot interpret beyond _yes_ : _yes_ , more; _yes_ , it’s good; _yes_ , as James leans into him; _yes_ , he says, “Yes, _yes_ ,” and then he’s coming with the soft sobbing noise that James loves so well, his mouth dropping open, so tempting that James has to kiss it. He loses himself a little in that kiss, and in his own last movements, which seem to go on and on and on, to the point that he fears he will hurt Thomas— except that Thomas is urging him forwards, digging his heels into James’s back, fisting his hands in James’s short hair, turning the kiss wet and ravenous and sloppy, and _yes_ , his eyes are still saying, _yes_ , and that _yes_ cuts through James like a bolt of lightning through rigging, fraying the knots and loosing the spars, and he lets himself finish in Thomas’s body, collapsing with a long and half-stifled groan.

They stay like that for a while, lying— skin slick and hot— against each other, Thomas planting lingering, almost absent-minded kisses against James’s jaw, collarbone, neck. When James goes to separate them, this kissing proves quite inconvenient, as Thomas shows no inclination to stop. They end up tangled together, James laughing softly as Thomas sprawls on top of him and nuzzles at his jaw like some sort of contented feline. He submits to the affection, stroking the broad muscles of Thomas’s back.

“Was that…?” he asks eventually, when they have settled a little.

Thomas lifts his head drowsily. “If you ask whether that was good, I shall leave this house and go live with the Yamacraw.”

James half-smiles. “You never used to like it that rough in London.”

Thomas lets his head drop again. He traces an idle shape on James’s shoulder. James doesn’t press him for a response. He is slowly learning that this new Thomas struggles to speak at times, does not always find it simple to put his thoughts into words. “I want—” Thomas says at last. “I want to— _feel_ it. It’s not always— easy.”

James thinks about this, keeping up his idle petting. His mind is not at its sharpest, and he is aware that the conversation is fragile. This is the most that Thomas has said to him on the topic. He does not want it to be the last. This terrain is almost unknown to him, and it would be so easy to take a false step. He says tentatively, “You want me to _make_ you feel it.”

“Mm.” It’s close to a yes. Perhaps as close to a yes as James is going to get. Then Thomas says, “What did I do?”

“Hmm?”

“What did I do that provoked you out of silence?”

James had not even noticed that he’d made a sound. He shifts a little uneasily. “I told you,” he says. “It’s nothing to do with you. I don’t know what it is. I suppose I just felt…” He wants to point to his physical pleasure, to the extremity of his desire; he wants to say that any man would struggle to remain silent in the face of Thomas hungry to be fucked even after he’d got his own end. And perhaps there’s a degree of truth to all of that. But when he thinks of what he felt, the word that comes to mind is _safe_. And he cannot very well say that to Thomas. He doesn’t even understand it in himself. He says instead, somewhat lamely, “I don’t know what I felt.”

He can sense that Thomas is dissatisfied, and so he presses an apologetic kiss to his forehead. Thomas makes a comfortable noise and pushes his face into James’s neck. James feels a great surge of relief. Forgiven again, he thinks.

 

**11.**

But James doesn’t feel forgiven. He feels that there is something volatile in the house— not good or bad, just unsettled; sometimes as hot and smouldering as a summer thunderstorm over the river, sometimes uneasy as St. Elmo’s fire crackling round a mast. He wonders which of them is more volatile. He can’t decide. He knows it often seems like him.

It’s not difficult for him to give voice to anger, is the problem. Indeed, it’s all too easy, easier than he would like it to be. It wells up within him and he finds the words to fit it— always the right words, even when the target is wrong; always the perfect words, calculated to do the most damage.

He likes to think of himself as an instrument he has mastered. Anger is a melody he knows how to play, as he knows how to play others: grief, pain, fear, perseverance. It’s a limited repertoire, one that he is desperately trying to expand—

“Yes,” he says experimentally, when Thomas gets a slick hand around him, and, “Please,” when Thomas pushes between his thighs, and “Yes, like that,” when they’re thrusting against each other, and “Fuck, Thomas,” into Thomas’s panting mouth. It’s not a question of what feels good; it all feels good. Thomas has always been good in bed— curious, and tender, and inventive, and far more experienced than James. That was how James had learnt to make noise in the first place: with Thomas’s teasing voice saying, “Do you like that, James? Do you want more? I suppose I’ll have to stop, if you don’t like it.” And then James, frantic: “No, God, _please_ , Thomas— oh— oh— please—” And then Thomas’s laugh, soft and warm and delighted, as though he did not understand how dangerous such sounds could be, as though he had never needed to fear the loss of control, in himself or in others. And perhaps he hadn’t. Not, at least, back then.

 

**12.**

As Flint, James had sometimes gotten hard in battle. It wasn’t uncommon. Fighting felt good— often even the pain felt good. It was the closest he came to touching anyone when he wasn’t with Miranda. Wrestling with Singleton on the _Walrus_ ’s quarterdeck, he’d felt almost tearful for a moment. Three years earlier, when they’d taken the _Allendale_ , a heavily-armed English merchantman, he’d lost his sword and found himself in close combat with the ship’s boatswain. The _Walrus_ had been at sea for weeks, and every time the man grappled at his waist or shoulder, Flint, dazed and leaking blood, had thought, Yes, again. When the battle was over, he went back to his cabin and brought himself off to the memory of the fight: being flung down on the boards, then the boatswain astride him, one hand clenching in Flint’s shirt while the other hand battered futilely against his ribcage, a touch he was powerless to resist.

 

**13.**

They fuck more now than they did when they were being so terribly cautious. Thomas crowds James up against the wall and slips a hand in his trousers; James wakes Thomas up by licking a slow stripe down his chest. It’s hard for them to keep their hands off each other. Often as not, the sex is fast and rough. Which is not to say incautious: once, Thomas says, “No, don’t— here, like this, it’s easier for your shoulder,” and another time, “This isn’t too hard, is it?” James, in turn, twice stops what he’s doing when he sees something he doesn’t like in Thomas’s face, redirecting them smoothly towards some other act.

They also seem to argue more now— not the polite, stilted disagreements that used to characterise most of their arguments, or the wild fits of temper that James sometimes directed at Thomas, desperate for him to fight back instead of playing dead, but ferocious, full-blooded clashes that end with objects thrown at walls (James), doors slammed (Thomas), or frigid silences (on the part of both).

The two things, sex and fighting, seem somehow tied up with one another. Certainly James doesn’t feel any angrier with Thomas; in fact, he finds himself overwhelmed, at moments, by how much tenderness he feels towards him. And he would rather have Thomas shout at him— though, even now, Thomas seems to find it impossible to shout— than sit there with that air of beaten-down compliance. He enjoys it when Thomas pushes back against him. Well, all right, not _enjoys_ , but… he needs someone to push against him, he thinks. Thomas had been that for him once. Perhaps the first person he’d ever known who could be that for him, who was strong, clever, and ruthless enough to do it. Who loved him enough.

“Does it bother you,” James asks drowsily, after one of their not-infrequent apologies has ended up, as they not-infrequently do, in bed, “that we argue so much lately?

Thomas shifts on top of him. “Why? Do you not like it?”

“I don’t mind it.”

“I don’t mind it either. I don’t think I knew I could do it. I don’t think I knew I had it in me.”

“Picking up my bad habits,” James says. He doesn’t say what he wants to say, which is that he’d like to teach Thomas all his bad habits. Proper swordsmanship. How to kill a man with a gun. How to kill a man with his bare hands, should that be needed or wanted. He is thinking of a story Thomas once told him, about a girl screaming in a madhouse. Thomas had thought that part of him dead, the part that could scream, shout, stand up, strike back, fight. But they are both of them gifted at resurrection, James has found.

 

**14.**

They argue about heating bath water in the winter: 

 

> “It’s laborious,” Thomas insists. “It’s a waste of time and firewood.”

> “You like it,” James counters. “You’ve always hated the cold.”

> “That doesn’t signify. I am no longer some spoilt aristocrat in need of indulging.”

> “Can you not just let me do this one thing for you, for the love of Christ?”

> “I don’t need you to care for me!” Thomas flings at him, looking edgy.

> “I do care for you!” James says, or rather snaps. “I apologise if you find it so difficult to accept!”

They argue about allowing men to come and go from the plantation:

 

> “You can’t simply assume that everyone has the same values as you do!” Thomas says. “Some inmates do not _want_ the kind of freedom that you’re describing; they want to know they are safe, protected, that the nation will not touch them again!”

> James shakes his head. “They think that because they’ve been allowed no other kind of thinking.”

> “Can you even hear how arrogant, how imperious, how self-important—“ Thomas makes an inarticulate, frustrated sound. “Constantly looking at things in the abstract, never attributing to others the power of intellectual life—“

> “What, because I believe that they are capable of being more than they are now?”

> “ _Yes!_ ”

> “Then I am more than happy to be convicted of such a position!”

They argue when they talk about the past:

 

> “Do you want me to never say her name?” James demands. “Never acknowledge the fact that I loved her, that for nearly ten years she was the only person in my life, the only real person, the only one who knew me?”

> “I can’t speak to you when you’re like this!” Thomas says, and hunches forward, putting his hands over his ears like a child.

> “Shall I jot that down on the list of ways I’m not allowed to speak to you? I keep it next to the list of things we’re not allowed to speak about!”

> “What, like your war?”

> “I’ve _told_ you about the war! Meanwhile—“

> “You tell me _pieces!_ ”

> “Meanwhile you ask me never to speak of Miranda—“

> “I’m not asking you for anything!” Thomas’s voice is loud, wavering.

> “That’s the _problem_!” James shouts at him.

They don’t argue about sex; not really; not more than they have done. The sex itself sometimes seems like an argument, but in fact it’s a kind of anti-argument, James supposes— the same shoving-against-each-other, the same provocations, the same testing and retesting of what is allowed, but with the element of hurt replaced by pleasure. Like a desperate private competition: how much can I make you not hurt? Not enough, James thinks. Never enough.

 

**15.**

They tumble onto their bed one winter evening, half-clothed and already in a state; though to say “tumble” is to perhaps misrepresent the situation, which in fact involves Thomas giving James a backwards shove and climbing on top of him to suck greedily at his neck. James doesn’t mind; he’s half-laughing, trying not very effectively to fend Thomas off. “You’ll leave a mark!” he protests. “I’ll have to wear a neckcloth!”

“Don’t,” Thomas says breathlessly. “I want to see it and be reminded that you made me want you that much.”

“Are you likely to forget?” James asks, arching an eyebrow. “Ought I to be concerned?”

Thomas mumbles something against his skin, where his hot mouth has set to work on another mark.

“I’m going to have to take—“ James exhales sharply and twitches up into the touch— “extreme measures. I’m warning you.”

“Mm,” Thomas says indistinctly. “I do like a warning.” He goes back to exactly what he was doing before, sliding a hand down to tease at one of James’s bare nipples.

James is moderately distracted, but many of the manoeuvres that serve one well in fighting also prove surprisingly useful in bed, and he gets his knees up and efficiently reverses their positions, toppling Thomas over and getting a leg on either side of him.

Thomas’s look of astonished offense is highly satisfying. “You—!” he begins.

“I may be old,” James says, “but I’m still a goddamn pirate. Don’t underestimate me.”

He leans in to kiss Thomas, coaxing his mouth open so he can get his tongue inside. Thomas responds with enthusiasm, the manhandling clearly forgotten or forgiven—  his hands are fumbling at the placket of James’s trousers. When he gets the buttons undone, he doesn’t even bother with the waistband; he just lets the front fall open, faintly obscenely, so that James’s cock is standing on display.

“Thomas,” James says against his mouth, half a moan and half a question. He grapples for Thomas’s hand, trying to bring it to him, but Thomas, with a huff of laughter, evades his grasp and breaks the kiss to bring his hand to James’s mouth instead.

James knows what Thomas wants, but instead of licking across the palm, he mouthes at the tips of two fingers, lightly caressing them with his tongue, then lowering his head to suck them deeper. Thomas raises himself up on one elbow, flushed and transfixed. Suddenly James’s cock is very close to his face, and all James can think of for a single, guilty moment is how much he wants to push into Thomas’s mouth— how much he wants Thomas to suck him as he’s he’s sucking Thomas’s fingers, how good it would feel, how good Thomas would look.

He is quick to avert his eyes, but not quick enough. Thomas catches the look: the thought. A single muscle jumps in his jaw. He says very neutrally, “You can if you want to. I don’t mind.”

James pulls off of his fingers, breathing hard. “ _Don’t_ ,” he says.

“Don’t what?"

“Don’t do that. Don’t do something you don’t want because you think it’ll please me.”

Thomas’s eyes flicker away. His mouth turns down. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You know exactly what I mean. You just— _go along_ , pretending like it doesn’t matter.”

“It _doesn’t_ matter.”

“It matters to me. _”_

 _“_ If you like it—“

“I fucking hate it!” James explodes, astonished by how angry he suddenly is. Does he mean “angry” _?_ For so long his emotions were largely divided into _angry_ and _not angry._ Coming back from that is like returning to land after a long time afloat: you think you can walk, but you’re turned strangely wobbly-legged. The ground is hard to negotiate. Sometimes it can hurt.

Thomas has gone very still and wary.

James rubs a hand over his face. Aware of his painfully ludicrous situation, he does up his trousers with self-conscious force. “I fucking hate it,” he repeats hoarsely. “I hate that you do this.”

He has to leave the room, he thinks; he can’t stay here with Thomas. He feels like a keel scraping hard over a length of reef. He doesn’t know why. He shoves himself away from the bed and searches for his discarded shirt.

“James,” Thomas says, following him.

James doesn’t look at him. He gets the shirt over his head; tucks the tails in, smooths the front with nerveless hands.

“So you’re just going to leave, then?” Thomas’s voice rises incredulously.

“That’s what _you_ do, isn’t it? When you’ve decided you don’t like an argument we’re having? When you don’t like something I’ve done in bed? Sometimes you don’t even actually leave the room, you just…” He gestures vaguely: like steam rising from boiling water, bleeding off into the air. “It’s a masterful strategy; very subtle. I have to watch you carefully to know if you’re there.”

“And your solution is— what?” Thomas flares. “To leave instead of me? How intelligent.”

“Have you got a better suggestion?”

“I don’t know; just _stay_ with me, James; make _me_ stay, don’t let me leave, if it upsets you!” Thomas reaches for James, catching at his shoulder, forcing James to turn towards him.

James knocks his hand away with a curt, violent motion. He has to shut his eyes for a long moment to control his temper. “I don’t want to _make_ you do anything,” he says fiercely. “How can you not understand that? I don’t want to make you do anything; I don’t want to force you; I don’t want to talk you into it; I don’t want to take anything from you; I don’t want to take anything from _anyone_ ; I’m so fucking tired of having to _take_ things _;_ I just want to trust you to let me not do that, and I can’t. I can’t. _Christ,_ I want to not be a monster to one person in this goddamn world, do you understand? —and you won’t let me do it!”

For some reason, his fist is poised at Thomas’s shoulder. He thinks that he had meant to strike Thomas, shove him away, but instead he just pushes that fist against him, as though he’s trying to topple a wall over. Thomas stands there and lets him do it; lets him push against him with all his force, breathing hard and unsteadily, and doesn’t say anything, even when James’s hand starts to tremble, even when James feels his expression of fury crack.

“I’m sorry,” Thomas whispers, looking stricken. “It’s nothing to do with you at all; I didn’t realise—“

“It _is_ to do with me. For fuck’s sake, Thomas—“ His voice has turned uneven. “You can’t just absent yourself from me; that isn’t how it works.”

“I know,” Thomas says. He raises a tentative hand to James’s fist and carefully prises his fingers open to interlace them with his own. “I know that; I’m sorry. I've told you, it’s not—” His voice catches. “It's not easy for me sometimes.”

James closes their hands together tightly. “It’s not easy for me either,” he says.

“I know. I know; I know.” Thomas leans in and kisses him, as though he is trying to communicate something, then keeps kissing him in small and rather distressed bursts. “I know; I’m sorry. You are no more a monster than I am. Please believe me. I have never, never wanted you to feel that way.”

James shuts his eyes and tips their foreheads together, but doesn’t say anything.

Thomas kisses him for a long time, his mouth gradually turning undemanding, easy, making the kiss into a slow chaste back-and-forth. His arms come up around James, one hand settling at the nape of his neck, stroking, and gradually James feels himself grow calm. This has always been the calmest place he could imagine, inside the circle of Thomas’s arms, where for so long he believed himself safe from all worldly interference. In the London of earlier years, Thomas had seemed to him almost invulnerable: beautiful, confident, powerful, rich. Now that James knows how very, very wrong he was— how very, very badly Thomas could be wounded— something of that superstition still lingers. For all the time he has spent— all the time he continues to spend— furious with himself for failing to protect Thomas, he still thinks of Thomas as someone who protects him.

Eventually Thomas sighs against him and pulls him closer. “Let me take you to bed,” he murmurs. “We can just rest if you like; we don’t have to—“

James nods, and allows Thomas to steer him across the room. It’s getting dark, and they ought to light a candle, but when he mentions something to this effect, Thomas says, “I would have to stop touching you, and I can’t bear that now, quite frankly,” and James doesn’t bother to object that the tinderbox is only a few feet away.

James lets Thomas push him back onto the bed and lie heavily atop him, kissing his throat in a meditative fashion as James smoothes a hand up and down his warm, bare back. There’s no urgency to it. It feels a little as though time has stopped running. The air doesn’t seem to get any darker. They’re both aroused, but they shift idly against each other without doing much about it, though James squirms from time to time under the touch of Thomas’s tongue. It’s not until Thomas pushes James’s shirt off and starts working his way down to his left nipple that James feels heat really spike through him. He exhales hard and moves his hand to ruffle Thomas’s hair.

“If we’re going to fuck,” he says quietly, “I want to light a candle. I like to see you.”

Thomas lifts his head, squinting at him. There’s something unfairly charming about him like this, even in the thick twilight: his hair mussed, his eyes crinkled at the corners. “Do you want to?”

“I can’t…” James closes his eyes. “…make that decision right now.”

A pause. At length, Thomas nods against him. “I’ll light the candle,” he says.

But it takes him a very long time to leave the bed, and when he returns carrying a lit bit of matchwood, he crowds very close to James while he transfers the flame to the wick. James doesn’t comment; he just turns to embrace him around the middle, kissing up the notched curve of his spine as the wick catches and the light spills. Then he tugs him back down to the bed in the sudden brightness, as soon as Thomas has extinguished the match, encouraging him to once more press James against the mattress. He likes the solidity of Thomas’s body blanketing him: almost too much, almost crushing, a weight he comes close to being unable to bear.

Thomas resumes kissing his chest with the same unhurried focus. He teases one of James’s nipples fully erect— which serves to tease other parts of James fully erect— before doing the same to the other, tonguing at it with gentle, encouraging precision. James had been somewhat ambivalent about fucking, balanced on a strange knife’s edge of wanting to strip Thomas naked and rut luxuriantly against his pale belly or wanting to lay his head against Thomas’s shoulder and rest. But now the knife has turned. He wants, he thinks. He wants. He feels oddly shy about it, fragile, as though he is like the matchwood Thomas had carried, his new flame small and liable to be snuffed— and at the same time fierce, restless, impatient with arousal. He presses hard up against Thomas’s body, not working for friction, just making his desire known.

Thomas responds by fumbling at the buttons of James’s trousers, his mouth going vague and unfocussed at the base of James’s throat. Their hands tangle together, blindly seeking, groping, pushing, and James works his trousers free of his hips, but Thomas’s breeches are a more complicated matter. He has to sit to unfasten his brass knee buckles, huffing in frustration at the loss of contact, so James shifts to sit behind him, fitting himself against the curve of his body. He kisses the nape of Thomas’s neck in such a slow, distracting manner that Thomas loses track of the buckles, his hands skittering to clutch at the coverlet. When James manages to rid him of his breeches, he just tips his head forward mutely, offering James further access, and James obliges, mouthing at the join of neck and shoulder, slipping a hand into his lap.

“Oh,” Thomas says somewhat hazily. “That’s— that’s good.” He moves, shifting himself forwards into James’s loose fist.

James lets him, and then doesn’t: wraps an arm around him and holds him, sucking a long kiss into his neck as he thumbs at his cock in a gentle, inquisitive fashion, marking every wanting noise that Thomas makes. There are a lot of them. It’s odd how vocal Thomas is during sex, when the rest of the time he tends to struggle. James likes it; it’s the only time that Thomas really gives voice to the obscure emotions inside him that James longs to know, to hear. Maybe it’s that conscious thought— the memory of Thomas denying him those emotions, all the _Nothing, nothing’s wrong, I’m sorry_ s, the _Whatever you like_ s, the _It’s fine_ s _,_ that smooth and affectless _Don’t what? I don’t know what you mean—_ that drives him to tighten his hand and hold Thomas harder as he strains against James’s arm with a fractured gasp. His head falls back against James’s shoulder, and he presses his hot forehead against James’s neck, breathing, “God, _oh— God—“_ and then, squirming restlessly against James’s body, “Let me— I was— I was— _God_ — I was going to—“

James doesn’t falter in his thoughtful, considering strokes. “If you don’t approve of what I’m doing,” he says, “I think you should stop me.”

He can hear the invitation in his own words. He hadn’t planned it, really, but the idea of Thomas forcing him to stop— of Thomas forcing him to do _anything_ , Thomas pinning him down, making demands— sends a surge of heat through him, and he thrusts against Thomas’s back, where he’s been rubbing himself in shallow damp slides.

“I,” Thomas says, “how can I when you’re— when you’re— oh, _James_ —“ He breaks off as James presses a lingering kiss under his jawline, just where the fair scruff of his beard gives way.

“Stop me,” James murmurs. He takes his hand off of Thomas’s cock and moves it to his hip, stroking his thumb against the arch of bone there. When Thomas huffs in protest, he says, “Then stop me. Thomas, stop me.”

It’s still a few indecisive moments before Thomas raises his hands to touch the arm that James has wrapped around his chest, and longer before that touch becomes something determined— before he pries James’s fingers loose from his bicep and elbows him lightly in the ribs, twisting hard so that James is forced to release him. They wrestle for a moment, without real resistance, more a twisting and groping of their bodies in a way that isn’t quite sex. It isn’t quite not sex, either— Thomas is an abominably poor fighter, and James ducks in to kiss him on the mouth, which makes Thomas smile involuntarily, then complain, “James, you’re cheating!” In the end, James lets himself be shoved backwards, roughly enough that he lands breathless. He blinks up at Thomas, who’s kneeling above him.

Thomas is wide-eyed, flushed, his lips parted, looking a little uncertain. His hands tighten around James’s wrists where he has them pinned. He doesn’t say anything for a long moment— neither of them says anything. They just stay there, frozen, breathing hard and gazing at each other. Thomas has the most astonishing eyes, like clouds above a shoreline, James thinks, dazed.

Then all at once they’re kissing frantically, hands scrabbling at the sides of each other’s faces, trying to drag each other closer, fingers yanking at hair, lips falling prey to teeth, bodies colliding without rhythm and at odd angles. Thomas mumbles something incoherent against James’s mouth, and digs his nails into his scalp. James sucks at Thomas’s lower lip in revenge. Thomas’s hips stutter; James grabs at them, then claws at his buttocks, trying to force him to thrust harder. It feels— he can’t think for how good it feels, Thomas’s needy mouth scraping his, and the shaky surge of him, pushing against James’s body.

“Let me—“ Thomas pants. “Let me— I want—“ He paws at the bedside table with a wild hand, sending a stack of papers flying.

James is mouthing wetly at his collarbone and doesn’t see what he’s reached for. But a moment later Thomas’s oil-slick hand touches the insides of his thighs, smoothing the skin there. Then the same slightly unsteady hand around his cock, both of their cocks, and Thomas pushes between his legs, squeezing his eyes shut and whispering, “James— _James_. _”_ James buries his head against his shoulder as Thomas settles shakily against him and James’s cock slides against the soft skin of his chest. His teeth catch against Thomas’s collarbone at the shock of the pleasure, a pleasure that he can’t pursue, that he can only submit to. It’s that thought that makes him groan, the sound slightly muffled. He’s so surrounded by Thomas that he feels overwhelmed: covered, sheltered, held and fucked, heavily anchored, known in the Biblical and every other sense.

When he lets his head fall back against the mattress, Thomas kisses him clumsily— just as fervent as before, but a little messier now, going slack-mouthed with each fast, convulsive thrust. After a moment he lays his face against James’s cheek as though he can’t quite find the energy to kiss him, or the coordination, maybe, but can’t stand, either, not to be so close. James wraps fierce arms around him, almost unable to breathe past a sudden rush of— _love_ , he supposes. He’s used to the idea of love as a violent emotion, something that wrecks you just as surely as a reef or a blow, leaving you bereft of all the solid things you’d come to rely on. Love forces you to rebuild. But never has he had such a visceral sense of the rebuilding. How can he bear Thomas’s cheek pressed to his own? How can he bear the small tenderness of such a gesture, in the face of all that they have suffered? In the face of all that, one way and another, love has done to them?

“Thomas,” he says, and is appalled by his own voice, rough and croaking. “ _Fuck_ —“ as Thomas gasps and his hips give a jerk. Then: “You know I really— _God,_ I— “

But he doesn’t say it, and he wishes he had, though it’s nothing he hasn’t said before. He just finishes rather unexpectedly, as though his own pleasure has picked him up by the scruff of his neck and given him a hard shake. It shocks him into a cry, and Thomas makes an almost wounded sound, all his movements going shivery and tense, and before James has recovered from the last of his orgasmic shudders, Thomas breathes out that small, specific sob and comes.

They collapse limply together, all heaving breaths and pooling sweat. Slowly, James becomes aware that he’s holding Thomas very tightly, probably more tightly than is strictly comfortable. He lets his arms relax and brings one of his hands up to gently cup the back of Thomas’s head, sifting fingers through his short, damp hair.

“Mm,” Thomas hums comfortably, and shifts to kiss him, pink-cheeked and sleepy-eyed and full of a particular sweetness that James sometimes sees in him after orgasm, as though he’s astonished by what’s just happened to him, as though each time happiness is a brand new feeling. James cherishes that sweetness. He’s always thought it was beyond him, something he could love in Thomas, but that he himself wasn’t capable of. He’d thought that in London, when, in retrospect, perhaps he’d had it within him, something deeply stifled that he only lacked the courage to enact; he’d thought it here in Georgia, with more reason, supposing he’d lost the chance forever, that it was one of the many things he had chosen to condemn. But now he feels something like that sweetness welling up in his vitals, like he has been a stone for so long, waiting to be struck with the right staff, something that could bring forth a sea of pure clean water, and at last the stone of him has cracked open.

He doesn’t say anything. He kisses Thomas’s nose, his cheeks, his eyelids; the soft lines at the corner of his mouth; then kisses them again, in an aimless, haphazard pattern.

Thomas laughs and ducks his head. “You seem happy.”

“I’m tremendously happy,” James says. “You make me happy. Maybe I don’t say that enough.”

“It’s often strongly implied,” Thomas says, with a faint curve of a smile.

“You do. Even when you make me unhappy, you still—“ Here he finds himself at a logical impasse. It seems to him still, though, an important point to make. There are people who can only please you, and when they do not please you, it is like the wind has turned and is blowing the other way. But with Thomas, the wind never turns. “— _I_ still,” he says. “—You know. You know what I mean.”

Thomas touches his lips with a light, affectionate finger. “Yes,” he says.

 

**16.**

Two days later, they quarrel over a change to the plantation’s constitution that would see them admit inmates from the lower class of London gaol. It is not a very coherent argument: Thomas (in favor) calls James a hypocrite and a coward; James (against) accuses Thomas of adopting radical stances out of sheer defiance rather than moral principle; Thomas repeats the charge of hypocrisy. The conversation degenerates, a hat gets hurled out of a window, and Thomas spends several hours sulking in the garden. Upon his return, James shoves him up against a wall and tears his shirt off. They proceed to have extremely frenetic sex that ends with both of them sagging— half-clothed, exhausted, and filthy— flat against the packed-dirt floor.

When at last Thomas peels himself off the floor, wincing, to go and wash, James props himself up on one elbow to watch him. It’s winter in Georgia, though you wouldn’t know it; he likes that the mildness of the weather means Thomas can bathe like this, stripping off his stockings and his open breeches to stand naked, scrubbing at his belly with a bit of what water is at hand, stray light from behind the curtains touching his back and shoulders.

Thomas must sense he’s being watched, because he turns, smiling almost helplessly at first. “Are you going to join me?” he asks. “I may use up all of the water.”

“I will in a moment.”

“What, are you ogling me?”

“I like to look.” James manages an insouciant shrug, making Thomas laugh out loud.

It’s true, though. He does like to look. He knows that Thomas is sometimes self-conscious about his dislike of being touched when he bathes (the source of which James suspects he can imagine, though he tries not to) but James can appreciate the advantages of such a situation. He enjoys watching Thomas wash after they fuck: a quite interlude, not quite belonging to the heated realm of coition, but not quite belonging to the normal world yet; a private space in which he can rest, drowsy and sated, watching this ordinary ritual take shape. It’s unexpected, something he couldn’t have known to long for. He could never have dreamt of such a thing without knowing Thomas: Thomas as he is now, not as he’d been before. He wonders, too, if the man he had been when he had been Flint could ever have envisioned himself as the subject of such a dream— if he could have pictured a world in he had the capacity to be so restful. He remembers a broken teacup, a fire in an ash-choked hearth, and he thinks: no. He has become something different from what he used to be. It is a strange thought. He used to think he was, at base, unchanging. That he could put on different characters like uniforms and take them off. Then when he lost himself in Flint, he thought he was lost forever— that the uniform had become his own skin, and there was no escaping it. But that hadn’t been the case either. He doesn’t know who he is now. Neither Flint nor not-Flint. Some strange amalgamation of the two; or someone else entirely, a new ship built from the scavenged timbers of both men. A man who can lie here in a one-room house near the coast of Georgia, without ambitions, content to watch his lover bathe.

“I’d have thought you’d have looked your fill by now,” Thomas says, turning back to the washbasin and pouring the last of the water from the jug. “God knows you see me naked often enough.”

“And yet I never tire of it.”

“Never?” Thomas glances over his shoulder, his mouth quirking in a grin.

“Never,” James says. He stands, arching his back in a long stretch, and crosses the room to where Thomas is bending one arm over his shoulder to wash his back.

On a whim, he waits till Thomas is looking and then, very deliberately, presses a kiss to the palm of his own hand. He holds his hand out— an offer— his palm facing upwards. Thomas hesitates, eyeing it, and James says gently, “You don’t have to.”

“I know I don’t,” Thomas says. But he takes James’s hand, his fingers brushing against the base of the wrist. It’s a cautious touch, but it turns firmer after a moment, and something in his expression clears.

“All right?” James asks.

Thomas says, “Yes,” and James finds he believes him. Neither one of them moves closer. They just stand there with their hands clasped as a warm wind stirs the curtains, bringing in a faint odor of earth— a scent that James is unable to read, not the way he used to read that of the ocean, which seemed to carry all the coming days of weather. It doesn’t tell him what the future will bring. It only smells of now: the warm soil cooling in the twilight, the damp recesses full of roots. James is glad. He does not want to know the future. Now, he thinks, is enough for him.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is rebloggable on [Tumblr.](http://septembriseur.tumblr.com/post/162527912214/congress-kvikindi-black-sails-archive-of-our)


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